MY WEBSITE IS ONLINE!

This morning I managed to identify and fix all of the known bugs in the catalog. By afternoon I put the first trial website online. The url is http://www.orchidscents.com. I think it’s functional in all of the basic respects, but it does need to be tested to find whatever bugs remain.

If you would be willing to help me test the e-commerce system by placing an “order” for the test item that I have embedded in the catalog, you will pay one cent and I will send you a big package of items and samples as a thank-you for your testing and whatever feedback you provide. I will do this for the first 5 people who place a test “order”. After that, I’ll see what further testing is needed.

To find the test item, go to the website and click on “Fragrance” in the menu on the left of the home page. The test item is the last one on the list, and is identified by the same orange rose icon shown in the photo. If you “buy” it, you will be taken through the whole shopping cart procedure (I hope), and I will be notified of your “order”. I will then have your shipping information and can send you your goodie box. Any and all comments regarding the website will be appreciated.

I am excited to move on to this next stage of sharing my creations with the public.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE ORCHID FRAGRANCE?

This is a contest for those of you who grow orchids or have encountered fragrant orchids at some point, and for those of you who have only experienced the so-called “orchid” note in perfume. Just post a comment naming your favorite fragrant orchid (the real flower) and describing its scent, or your favorite perfume that contains an “orchid” note, describing its scent. At the end of June, I’ll pick the winning entry. If there are not enough entries by then, the contest will be extended until there is some sort of quorum. If you are the winner, you will receive a gift set containing a 15 ml bottle of Red Cattleya Eau de Parfum and a matching soap. Check out the post on Red Cattleya to learn about the orchid flower that inspired the scent, the making of the perfume, and what it smells like.


Here's a picture of a miniature orchid whose name identifies it as being fragrant, Schoenorchis fragrans. The whole plant only has about a 5 cm (2 inch) leaf span, so the flowers are tiny. My plant, shown in the photo taken a couple of years ago, is blooming right now, a little jewel hanging in the sun room where I grow some of my plants. Surprisingly, the fragrance is not the traditional "orchid" note, but rather a light, fresh, green, aquatic scent. Like so many other orchids, its scent could be interpreted to make a wonderful perfume.

It has to start somewhere!

Ever since I can remember I’ve been fascinated by smells - the smell of the house we lived in when I was a toddler, the smell of flowers and plants in the garden, the smell of things cooking, the smells of people with and without perfume, the smell of rain or the ocean, stones, wax crayons - anything and everything that had an odor. Once I was old enough to buy things for myself, I gradually amassed a huge collection of essential oils and whatever mainstream perfume minis were available in the shops that sold them. At that point I was more interested in opening them and sniffing them than actually wearing them.

Despite this obsession with sniffing things, my path to perfumery was not direct. In fact, it was a completely different interest that led me to it. I grow orchids commercially, selling them at local shows and through an online nursery business, Olympic Orchids. In the process of taking care of the orchids, I noticed that when they bloomed, the different varieties had completely different fragrances, and realized that they might make wonderful perfumes unlike any others that are on the market.

At first I experimented just for myself, using the essential oils that I had in my collection to try to recreate the different fragrances. It quickly became apparent that essential oils alone are not sufficient to accurately duplicate flower scents, so I started selectively tweaking with absolutes, infusions, tinctures, and synthetics to get the effects that I wanted. Once I came close, I realized that the scent of an orchid is being constantly renewed with top notes secreted by the flower, something that cannot happen in a perfume that’s only applied once and allowed to evaporate. This meant that I had to adapt the orchids’ scents to create perfumes with a traditional top, middle and base note structure. It’s been a long process of experimentation and learning, but I now have a basic set of orchid-inspired perfumes as well as a good many others. My general philosophy is to use natural materials whenever possible, resorting to synthetics only when nothing else will work.

It’s exciting to write the first post for my blog, and look forward to posting on a near-daily basis.